Zhao et al.
Energy Informatics (2018) 1:2
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42162-018-0011-9
PROJECT REPORT
Project report: new generation intelligent
building platform techniques
Qianchuan Zhao1*, Li Xia1
* Correspondence:
zhaoqc@tsinghua.edu.cn
1
Center for Intelligent and Networked
Systems (CFINS), Department of
Automation and TNList, Tsinghua
University, Beijing 100084, China
Full list of author information is
available at the end of the article
Energy Informatics
Open Access
and Ziyan Jiang2
Abstract
Background: Governments and societies all over the world pay more and more
attention to the research and development of smart buildings. There are numerous
research projects on smart buildings that have been or being conducted worldwide.
Case presentation: In this project report, we give an introduction about a newly
launched research project sponsored by the Chinese central government. This
project aims to combine information technology and control & optimization
methodology to address challenging problems in building energy. To study and
implement a decentralized control and optimization paradigm in smart buildings is
one of the key tasks of this project.
Conclusions: The combination of informatics and energy is a very important
viewpoint to study the management and operation of modern buildings. Research
activities in this area shall contribute a lot to the invention and development of new
building industrial opportunities.
Keywords: Smart building, Building energy, Cyber physical system, Decentralized
control
Background
As one of the most important parts of infrastructure supporting daily life of human so-
ciety, buildings’ efficient and safe operation is a critical issue. Just taking building en-
ergy consumption as an example, buildings contribute a significant part of the total
energy consumption in many developed and developing countries. For example, in
2016, buildings (residential and commercial sectors) consume about 40% of the total
energy and 70% of the electricity in the United States, according to the annual energy
review of the U.S. Energy Information Administration (https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/
faq.php?id=86&t=1). The numbers in EU and other developed countries are also simi-
lar (https://ec.europa.eu/energy/en/topics/energy-efficiency/buildings) (Berardi 2015).
In China, the energy consumption in buildings has risen from 10% to 25% of the over-
all energy consumption of the country since 1978, and is predicted to be increased to
35% in the coming years (Jia et al. 2014).
However, the efficient and safe operation control and management of buildings is ex-
tremely challenging due to the strong dependence of building performances on continu-
ously varying functionalities of buildings, occupant behaviors, outdoor environments,
diversified structure and building materials, customized operation management
© The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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indicate if changes were made.
Zhao et al. Energy Informatics (2018) 1:2 Page 2 of 5

strategies, and so on. Thus, the intelligent building control and management is by nature
a cross-disciplinary research, and requires one to use the knowledge (such as models on
building dynamics, occupant behaviors, and outdoor environments) and the methodology
(such as optimization and online decision-making theory) from multiple fields.
In recent decades, the fast development of information technology has significantly
changed the engineering, economical, and social fields of human society. The research on
smart buildings also thrives, although most of our current buildings are still working in an
out-of-date manner. Utilizing modern information and control technology (ICT) to re-
build the information infrastructure of buildings has fundamental effects on the research
of smart buildings. Since building is a very important part of the whole energy system in
human world, the combination of informatics and energy plays a significant role in the re-
search of efficient management and operation of modern buildings. The research of smart
buildings in China is developing fast. However, the deployment of building management
systems (BMS) in China still needs numerous efforts to make it become a standard. The
current BMS is in a centralized form and it requires a lot of manpower to make configura-
tions during the deployment. The scalability and robustness are also potential concerns.
How to treat these challenges is an interesting research topic.
Governments and societies all over the world pay more and more attention to the research
and development of smart buildings. There are numerous research projects on smart build-
ings that have been or being conducted worldwide. For example, the Information Society of
European Commission has sponsored a series of projects (35 projects listed on the official
website of EU, see (http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sustainable_growth/
funding/prj_buidings/index_en.htm) for more information) to support the sustainable
growth of Europe. These projects aim at applying ICT to buildings for energy saving and in-
telligent management. The NSF of the U.S. also launched a series of research projects in
smart buildings, e.g., a $2-million grant was funded to scholars of MIT and Boston University
to explore substantial carbon footprint and energy cost reductions in buildings (https://
www.bu.edu/sustainability/nsf-greenlights-sustainable-building-project/). Compared to these

Fig 1. An illustration of related systems in Buildings (Adapted from a source picture on Internet: https://blog.eco
nocom.com/en/blog/smartbuilding-and-bms-a-little-glossary/)
Zhao et al. Energy Informatics (2018) 1:2 Page 3 of 5

projects, the main feature of our project is the decentralized framework, which is a beneficial
exploration of self-organization, scalability, and robustness of ICT in smart buildings (Fig. 1).

Case presentation
Project description
Recently, China launched a National Key Research and Development Program entitled
new generation intelligent building platform techniques (2017.07–2020.12) with Grant
No. 2017YFC0704100. Such category of programs is the top tier of scientific projects
sponsored by the Chinese government, which reflects the prior research direction na-
tional wide. A typical financial amount of such project is around 10 million US dollars
and it will involve many partners diverse from universities, research institutes, indus-
trial companies, etc.
The aim of this project (Grant No. 2017YFC0704100) is to introduce advanced infor-
mation and control technologies including system modeling, decentralized control and
optimization, Internet of Things (IoT) to address the challenges arising from the intelli-
gent operation of building devices in a highly dynamical environment. The paradigm of
decentralized control and optimization is the key feature of this new building platform.
In the decentralized framework of smart buildings, there does not exist a centralized
node or computer to coordinate the whole control system. All the nodes in the building
are at a peer level and they are self-organized together to accomplish various functions
of the building. This decentralized framework of ICT can alleviate the deficiencies
caused by the traditional centralized control schemes, such as the difficulties of auto-
matic configuration and deployment, self-organization, scalability, robustness, etc. As
illustrated in Fig. 2, the new framework of the decentralized operating system is com-
posed of many building space units, which are working in a self-organized way. Each
unit in the topology of the right side of Fig. 2 includes many intelligent building de-
vices, such as sensors and actuators of buildings. More importantly, each space unit
has a computing node, which monitors and controls all the devices inside this space
unit. Computing nodes also communicate with its neighbors in a peer-to-peer way,
which makes the total operating system work in a decentralized style.

Fig. 2 An illustration of the decentralized control system in buildings

Zhao et al. Energy Informatics (2018) 1:2 Page 4 of 5

Some deliveries of this project include a decentralized operating system for smart
buildings and intelligent electromechanical devices working in decentralized form. The
system will be deployed in at least 5 demonstration buildings, more than 100,000
square meters. These buildings are commercial complexes and located in different cli-
mate zones of China, two in South China, one in East China, and two in North China.
The operating system should accommodate more than 5000 intelligent nodes, 30 types
of electromechanical devices, and 20 software applications. The accumulative
localization errors of indoor occupants should be less than 10%.

Project partners
Prof. Qianchuan Zhao from the Center for Intelligent and Networked Systems (CFINS),
Department of Automation, Tsinghua University is the PI of the project. Prof. Jili Zhang
and Prof. Guowei Wu from Dalian University of Technology, Prof. Jianchun Xing and
Prof. Qiliang Yang from PLA University of Science and Technology, Prof. Qiansheng
Fang and Prof. Zhenya Zhang from Anhui Jianzhu University, and Dr. Ziyan Jiang from
Tsinghua University are Co-PIs. The team also includes researchers and engineers from
China Academy of Building Research, China Institute of Building Standard Design &
Research, China Architecture Design Group and other industrial partners. The indus-
trial partners have three types of companies. One type is the real estate companies,
such as China Resources (Holdings), which provide demonstration buildings to deploy
our technology developed in this project. The second type is the manufacturers of
building devices, such as Gree Electric Appliances and Sinro Air-Conditioning Com-
pany, which provide the manufacturing of intelligent building devices. The third type is
the system integrators, such as Tsinghua Tongfang, which deploy the whole system to
demonstration buildings.

Fig. 3 a Customized Building Control System (left). b New Platform of Building Control System (right)
Zhao et al. Energy Informatics (2018) 1:2 Page 5 of 5

Discussion and evaluation

The team employs cyber-physical systems (CPS) as the overall modeling framework. The
advantage of this strategy is that the physics underlying building dynamics can be expli-
citly considered. A new architecture of building control and management systems will be
developed to reduce design, deployment, and maintenance cost. Different from traditional
way of developing building control systems as shown in Fig. 3a, by considering physics
side of buildings, general purpose building control programs will be developed on top of a
general purpose building operating system, as shown in Fig. 3b. The building operating
system needs to hide the diversified structures of individual buildings and present inter-
faces to the general purpose building control and management programs (application pro-
grams) to access the abstract model of buildings. The application programs are developed
based on standard building models instead of specific buildings.

Conclusions
Although China is still a developing country, China has a fast investment rate of infra-
structure construction all over the world. For the sector of building industry, China has
more than 50% of the constructed super high-rise buildings in the world (https://en.wi
kipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings) and more are under construction. The com-
bination of informatics and energy is a very important viewpoint to study the manage-
ment and operation of modern buildings. The Chinese government has realized the
importance of buildings in the whole energy system and research & development. A lot
of research grants and programs are being announced, according to the national
5-years research plan of China. These emerging research activities also contribute a lot
to the invention and development of new industrial opportunities.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to present their appreciation to the entire research team of this project, who have contributed
and been contributing to advance the progress of this project.

Funding
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China with Grant No. 2017YFC0704100.

Availability of data and materials

This report does not include specific experiment data or materials.

Authors’ contributions
QZ and LX mainly composed the manuscript and ZJ provided the details about the decentralized testbed. All authors
read and approved the final manuscript.

Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Author details
1
Center for Intelligent and Networked Systems (CFINS), Department of Automation and TNList, Tsinghua University, Beijing
100084, China. 2Building Energy Research Center, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.

Received: 17 January 2018 Accepted: 16 March 2018

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